Car Titles Not In The Owners Name With Bill Of Sale

What Is Curb Stoning?
Many of you have been a victim of this very common used car scam called curb stoning, although you may not have known what the name of it is. Sometimes you’ve heard it called title jumping or title skipping. What it entails is when a person is trying to flip a vehicle, what they’ll do is they’ll find a vehicle that they can buy for cheap—maybe at an auction, maybe from a private seller—and they’ll take that title and on the back it’ll be signed over to them. But what they won’t do is they won’t bring that title down to the DMV.

The DMV and Skip Titles
They won’t go to the DMV to get a new title in their name, pay the fees, pay the tax, and properly transfer it. They’ll just flip it and skip it over to you and sign the back. The problem with that is it voids the title. The only time you can reassign a title is if you’re a licensed dealer, and many times these curb stoners, as they’re called, will just flip it to you and now it’s your title problem. So you may have received a title that’s signed over to you improperly, and you didn’t know about it until you went to the DMV, which is even worse.

Expert Advice and Options
Why do they call it curb stoning? Well, curb stoning is called that because these are dealers that don’t have an official dealership license. They don’t have a repair shop license, they don’t have a business or a building—they just sell cars on the curb. That’s why they call it curb stoning. They’ll put an ad on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or OfferUp. They’ll tell you to meet them at some intersection or in a parking lot, and they take your cash, they give you a title that’s not going to be usable, and now you’re on your own.

How the Scam Works
This article from Autotopian is a great description of it. You notice the picture says “buyer beware,” right? You really have to be careful of doing this because if you have that title, you could actually have the title revoked. You might even find out there are liens on it. You might find out it’s a salvage title. But either way, you’re going to have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops to get a title.

How To Protect Yourself
So avoid these cars like the plague. Don’t buy a skip title. If the seller is not the same person printed on the front, you have to check their ID—avoid that car because it’s going to be a title problem. Even if it’s really, really cheap, you could run into problems getting a new title with your name on it.

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